He shook his head, and, infuriatingly, smiled. ‘You really are a pain in the ass, you know that?’
‘Takes one to know one,’ I said.
‘Ah, there’s that refined wit of yours.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘Shut up, will you? Please, for once in your life, just shut up.’
He took a step closer, and then another. I could smell the faint trace of soap and aftershave lingering on his skin, along with something deeper, almost musky. Heat seemed to radiate from him. I took a step back onto the road, but he reached out and pulled me back onto the pavement.
What happened next seemed to unfold in slow motion. The Friday-night revelers streaming past, on their way to restaurants and pubs and house parties and evenings in with a takeaway and Netflix. The way Jackson raised his hands, tentatively at first, and then quickly, as though he was about to catch a firefly in his cupped palms rather than my face. The feel of his fingers on my cheeks, the softness of them, the surprising lightness of his touch, and then his face coming towards me, his hazel-green eyes open and staring straight into mine, and then the warm pressure of his mouth on mine.
It only lasted a second before I came to my senses. But not before I found myself kissing him back.
I pushed him away. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ I hissed.
He took a step back and ran his hands through his hair. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘I just thought—’ He gave me a searching look. ‘You can’t tell me you don’t feel something between us.’
‘I don’t feel anything!’ I shouted. An elderly man who was passing us stopped and asked gently if I was all right. The pity in his eyes made me want to weep. ‘I’m fine,’ I said hurriedly, waving him away. ‘I was just going.’
‘Don’t go,’ Jackson said, putting a hand out to stop me.
‘Don’t touch me,’ I seethed. I saw the hurt look on his face and softened. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just – this is my life,’ I said, gesturing around me. ‘And here you come swooping into it and telling me to blow it all up.’ I shook my head. ‘And I can’t.’
He bowed his head. ‘I don’t want you to blow your life up,’ he said quietly.
‘I have to go.’ I moved to leave, but he blocked my way. ‘I’m going away with Christopher this weekend. I have to pack.’
‘Meet me on Monday morning.’
I looked at him. ‘What?’
‘Meet me on Monday morning halfway across Westminster Bridge. My flight isn’t until the afternoon, I could take you for a coffee, or breakfast if you want, and we could …’
‘What, Jackson? What could we do?’
‘Talk,’ he said gently.
‘I can’t,’ I said curtly. ‘I have work. I have a fiancé.’ I threw my hands in the air, exasperated. ‘I have a life!’
‘I want to have a life with you.’ His gaze remained steady, and I felt myself wilt under its intensity.
I looked away. ‘This isn’t real life, Jackson. You know that, right? You and me, we never should have even met. I shouldn’t have got drunk, I shouldn’t have said whatever it was I said to you, and I sure as hell shouldn’t have married you. Now please, I have to go home. Will you let me go?’
‘Monday morning, nine a.m., Westminster Bridge,’ he repeated. ‘If you don’t come, I’ll go back to America and I’ll give you your divorce.’
‘You will?’
He nodded. ‘I promise. If you don’t show up, I’ll send you the papers and you’ll never have to see me again. But please, just promise me you’ll think about it.’
‘There’s nothing to think about.’
‘Maybe not,’ he said. ‘But think about it anyway.’
I nodded and pushed past him. I could feel his eyes on my back as I headed towards Hackney Road, but I didn’t turn back to see.
‘Something happened.’ I was pressed against the side of a pub a few blocks away from the flat, phone clutched to my ear, breathing ragged and irregular. On the other end of the phone, I could hear Isla’s footsteps as she rushed down the corridor, and the faint bleep of a far-off heart monitor.
‘Okaaaaaay. You’re going to have to be more specific.’
I’d managed to get most of the way home in a dull, shocked haze. I sat on the Northern Line, staring at my yellowed reflection in the train window, and willed myself not to think. A man next to me ate McDonald’s French fries out of a grease-stained bag, and the woman opposite me made an O-shape with her mouth as she applied mascara. I wondered, briefly, why everyone made that face – it genuinely did nothing to aid the mascara application process – before the rising sense of doom chased the thought away. My life was literally disintegrating before my eyes. Who cared why people made that face when applying mascara?
At Camden Town, a hoard of teenagers wearing backpacks covered in badges and too much black eyeliner pushed on, clutching plastic bags filled with cheap T-shirts they’d bought at the market. They jostled and swore and cajoled and flirted with each other, while the rest of us seethed at their youthful exuberance, before finally, mercifully, the train reached Tufnell Park and I was deposited unceremoniously on the platform.
That’s when the breakdown started in earnest.
Thankfully, Londoners are used to people having breakdowns on Tube platforms – and on buses, and in taxis, and on those death-trap rental bicycles, and probably on those gondolas to Greenwich no one uses – so everyone politely averted their eyes as I blubbed indecorously next to a pile of discarded Metros.
I had kissed another man. Technically, he had kissed me – I pictured myself on the witness stand, jabbing an accusatory finger at Jackson’s stupid, handsome face – but technicalities weren’t particularly pertinent when I knew in the blackest depths of my heart that I’d kissed him back. Even for a second. I’d kissed him back and, worse, I’d enjoyed it. Even now, I could still feel the pressure of his lips on mine. A current ran through me.
The judge banged his gavel on the desk. Guilty!
And now, I was huddled against a brick wall down an alleyway, hoping that Isla would have some words of wisdom that would get me out of this.
She had words, but I wasn’t sure how wise they were. ‘Don’t tell Christopher.’ That was the first thing she said. And then, ‘What was it like? He struck me as a tongue-thruster. Was he a tongue-thruster?’ And then, most insanely, ‘Maybe this is a good thing.’
‘A good thing? How can kissing a man who is not my fiancé be a good thing?’ I cried.
‘For starters, the man you kissed is your husband, so technically it’s more kosher for you to be kissing him than for you to be kissing Christopher.’
‘Not helpful.’
‘Second, and I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m guessing maybe you enjoyed it?’
I screwed up my face in disgust even as the current zinged through me again. ‘I did not!’
‘Come on,’ she coaxed. ‘Maybe just a little?’
Jackson’s warm lips on mine, the smell of his skin, the pressure of his hand on the back of my neck … No! I shoved the thought down into the vault, where I kept other forbidden memories, like the time I let one fly during a particularly vigorous dodge ball session in seventh grade.
Isla took my silence for consent. ‘I knew it!’ she crowed.
‘I’m telling you,’ I said, balling my fingers into a fist, ‘I did not enjoy it!’
‘Ah, the lady protests too much,’ Isla laughed delightedly.
There are times when I have to dig deep into the rich history of our shared friendship to prevent myself from absolutely clobbering her. ‘Isla,’ I said in my calmest kindergarten teacher voice, ‘will you please listen to me? This isn’t a joke. I seriously fucked up here, and I don’t know what to do about it.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice dropped an octave as she went into crisis-management mode. That’s why I loved her – just when she was about to drive you around the bend, she put on her hero-doctor hat and sorted out a solution. ‘Okay, let’s assess the situation. What happened after the kiss?
’
‘I pushed him.’
‘You pushed him?!’
‘Yes, I pushed him. And then I yelled at him.’
‘A push, then a yell.’
I nodded at the collection of cigarette butts scattered by my feet. ‘That’s right. What else was I supposed to do?’
‘I don’t know … talk about it?’
‘Well, he did come out with this whole crazy speech about how we had a connection and how I shouldn’t marry Christopher.’
I heard Isla take a long drag on her cigarette. ‘Wait. Are you saying there was a declaration?’
‘I wouldn’t call it a declaration …’
‘The man said you shouldn’t marry another man because the two of you had a connection, correct?’
‘Correct,’ I said weakly.
‘And this came directly after him kissing you?’
‘Yes …’
‘I would definitely call that a goddamn declaration.’
‘Well, I don’t care what it was.’
‘So how did it end?’
I filled her in on his Westminster Bridge proposal. (The irony of receiving a proposal involving one of London’s iconic bridges, but from the wrong man, and not of the sort I’d been after in the first place, was not lost on me.)
‘Is this guy being played by Ryan Gosling or what?’ Isla cried. ‘The next thing you’re going to tell me is he carries a pug under his arm and is really into capoeira.’
An image of Jackson petting the dog in the park earlier flashed into my head. ‘I don’t think he’s into martial arts,’ I said uncertainly.
‘So what are you going to do?’ she asked breathlessly (though I wasn’t sure if the breathlessness was due to excitement or the third cigarette I heard her lighting).
‘What do you mean, what am I going to do?’
‘I mean, who are you going to choose? Ryan Gosling or … hmm, who would play Christopher in this? Oh! Who was that guy in Love Actually?’
‘Hugh Grant?’ I suggested.
‘No, not him. The one who ends up with the Portuguese waitress … you know, the boring one.’
‘Hey!’
‘Colin Firth! God, he’s so fucking boring I forgot his name.’
‘Christopher is not boring,’ I insisted.
‘When was the last time you guys had sex in a non-missionary position?’
‘Isla!’
‘I rest my case! Soooooo … who’s it going to be? Ryan “Hey Girl” Gosling, or Colin “Lockjaw” Firth?’
‘I really think you’re being unfair to Colin Firth,’ I said. ‘And to Christopher!’ I added hurriedly. ‘Anyway, this is crazy. Of course it’s Christopher! He’s the person I’m meant to spend the rest of my life with!’
For once, Isla had been reduced, at least momentarily, to silence. ‘Are you sure?’ she asked finally, gently.
‘About what?’
‘About you and Christopher. When I saw you in Las Vegas …’
‘Jesus Christ!’ I shouted. A passing dog walker stopped and peered at me down the alleyway and I conjured up a manic smile and a thumbs-up to keep him moving. ‘I do not want to hear another thing about Las Vegas,’ I hissed. ‘Taking that trip was the biggest mistake of my life. If I hadn’t gone, none of this mess would have happened.’
‘Thanks a lot,’ she said. ‘I could have spent those Air Miles going to Ibiza, you know. That fact that I’ve never been to Pacha is practically criminal.’
‘You know that’s not what I meant. It’s just, ever since that trip, my whole life has been completely turned upside down.’
‘Is that such a bad thing? I mean, it worked for the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.’
‘Of course it is!’ I cried. ‘And can you please be serious for once?’
She sighed. ‘I am being serious. All I’m saying is that maybe you should look at the situation not as a mess that needs to be cleared up, but as an opportunity to broaden your horizons.’
‘Oh,’ I snapped, ‘my horizons have been broadened all right. They’re so broad they couldn’t fit sideways into an airplane hangar. That’s the whole point – I don’t want my horizons broadened. I want them narrowed down to a very finite number of things that are currently printed on a laminated list in my bag.’
‘Oh God,’ Isla groaned. ‘Will you stop with the list already?’
‘No, I won’t stop! The list has got me where I am today.’
‘Crying down the phone to me?’
‘You know what I mean. I’m on a path, Isla,’ I said firmly. ‘Christopher and I have been together for six years. We love each other.’
‘I spent all of 2001 wearing Juicy Couture tracksuits,’ Isla said. ‘Just because you do something for a long time doesn’t make it right.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I fumed.
‘What if Christopher isn’t the man you want to marry?’ She heard my sharp intake of breath and hurried to explain. ‘I’m not saying you didn’t want to marry him at some point. Of course you did! He’s a nice guy, he has a sexy accent, and he has very good hair. I get the appeal.’
‘Exactly,’ I said, triumphant.
‘No, you’re not listening. Maybe that was right for you when you first met him and decided to tick that box on your list, but that doesn’t mean he’s right for you now.’
‘Of course it does.’
‘Are you telling me that you’re exactly the same person now as you were when you were twenty-five?’
I thought about this. ‘I get better haircuts now,’ I admitted.
‘It’s not just your hair!’
‘… and I’m more responsible about dental hygiene.’
‘Yes, I’m sure those things are true, and I’m glad to hear you’re taking your dental hygiene more seriously, because gingivitis can lead to major health problems, but do you think you might have changed on a deeper level?’ I didn’t respond. ‘Because I can tell you’re a different person, even if you can’t. A smarter, more interesting, more nuanced person. Do you know why?’
‘Because I finally learned how to pronounce the word Sauvignon?’
‘No! It’s because literally everyone is a smarter, more interesting, more nuanced person at thirty-one than they were at twenty-five. Do you know why? Because twenty-five-year-olds aren’t adults. They’re people who wear adult clothes and pretend to go to adult jobs, but really they’re just fifteen-year-olds who’ve been given access to credit!’
I thought back to my twenty-five-year-old self. True, I had been consistently surprised when a paycheck arrived in my bank account every two weeks. And sure, despite this, I hadn’t managed to return a single library book without having to fork out a whopping late fine. And of course, there was the time I fell asleep on the subway and ended up in Yonkers. She may have a slight point.
‘Jenny, you have to stop boxing yourself in like this. I know that after the day of the flying ants—’
My stomach dropped. ‘I don’t want to talk about that.’
‘I know you don’t, but I don’t care. I was there. I know what you went through.’
‘It was fine,’ I said quietly.
‘No, it wasn’t. No kid should have to take on what you did.’
There it was. The phrase I’d heard so many times over the course of my life. It didn’t change anything, though. I did what I did because I had to. My mother had needed help, and no one else would give it to her.
Sure, at first there were loads of people offering to help out. My aunt came by every week to check on us before a new job meant she had to relocate to a different state. Friends would stop by with casseroles and looks of concern, and most of the time my mother would conjure up a grateful smile and invite them in for coffee. But then there were too many flares of anger, too many curses shouted and doors slammed in faces, and they eventually stopped coming. There were social services, of course, but they were the people I feared the most. I was scared they’d try to take her away from me, or me away from her. Every time the
y turned up, I made sure she took her meds in the morning and I’d give her my little pep talk. ‘You have to try to be good, okay?’ I would coax. ‘Just stay calm and it’ll be over before you know it.’ We would invite them in and show them around – look at our well-stocked fridge! Our freshly scrubbed bathroom! – give them a cup of tea and shove them out the door as quickly as possible. And then, after a year of successful visits, they stopped coming, too. And then it was just the two of us.
Most of the time it was fine. She took her medication, she went to therapy, she tried her best. I could see that in her – that constant fight against the tide of her condition. But sometimes she would lose, and I would come downstairs in the middle of the night to find her cleaning out her desk drawers or rearranging the canned goods alphabetically. Other times, she’d tell me she was going out to buy groceries and return three days later with a strange man in tow. And then, every once in a while, her anger would return, and I’d come home to find the kitchen destroyed, and I’d have to slope off to Walmart to buy a new set of dishes.
It never felt like a burden, though. No, it was different to that. It felt like my birthright. Like something I deserved. Deep down inside, in the cavernous recesses of my brain, a voice would tell me that, one day, the same thing would happen to me. It was only a matter of time. The dark thing that lived inside her lived inside me, too, and it was only a matter of time before it showed its face and began its work of systematically destroying me.
That’s why I made the list. To my thirteen-year-old mind, the only way to keep it at bay was to remain completely in control at all times. My mother had been fine until my father left, and the plans she’d made for herself had fallen apart. I wouldn’t let that happen to me. That’s why the list was so important. It was my lifeline.
‘All I’m saying,’ Isla continued, ‘is that you should just think about whether this is really what you want before you go through with it.’
That phrase again— ‘just think about it’. Why did everyone keep imploring me to think? As if I was some kind of mindless automaton wandering through her day making vague bleeping noises. Didn’t they know that I spent every single minute of every single hour thinking and planning and analysing my next move? ‘I don’t need to think about it,’ I spat. I could hear the harsh edge in my voice, but I couldn’t stop myself.
Jenny Sparrow Knows the Future Page 23
